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Free Jeremy Hammond

Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison! Show Him He Still Has Our Support!Jeremy Hammond is a 28-year-old political activist sentenced to 120 months in prison, with an additional 3 years probation upon his release,
after pleading guilty to the Anonymous conspiracy to hack the private
intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). A longtime proponent
of "hactivism," his actions are a form of electronic civil
disobedience. He believes that "people have a right to know what
governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors."

The Stratfor emails published by WikiLeaks reveal the intricate and troubling relationship between unregulated private corporations and government agencies involved in security and intelligence. The emails show how Stratfor employs a network of paid informants that includes government employees and journalists. Some examples of the continuing revelations from the thousands of hacked emails show, that Stratfor was hired by: Dow Chemical to spy on people seeking redress for the victims of the Bhopal environmental disaster; the Texas Department of Public Safety to infiltrate the activist community of Occupy Austin, and by Coca Cola to gather intelligence on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

The case against Hammond and his international co-defendants is based upon the FBI 's use of an informant, Hector Monsegur ("Sabu"), who under FBI direction infiltrated Anonymous. So complete was its control that agents, at times, assumed the hacker's identity. The FBI supplied the server to hold the hacked data and proposed and facilitated the hacking of hundreds of targets of its own choosing.

Sabu's cooperation led to numerous arrests of hactivists worldwide, many who have since pleaded guilty and have been sentenced. Jeremy's co-defendants from England and Ireland have received sentences ranging from Probation to 30 months and are not likely to be extradited to the U.S. Several have publicly renounced their actions and given lengthy statements to the authorities.

Originally facing a sentence totaling more than 35 years and additional indictments in 12 other federal jurisdictions, Jeremy pled to a single count of conspiracy under the draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). He faces a maximum of ten years.

The government celebrates the conviction of political hackers as a victory, citing "national security" in order to justify the expansion of computer crime laws and expending billions of dollars on classified cyber security operations. But, today as a result of Edward Snowden's revelations, public opinion is turning against the NSA's warrantless surveillance and offensive cyber war and the politically motivated prosecution of whistleblowers.

Jeremy deserves our support for his efforts to expose injustice and create a more transparent, democratic and egalitarian society.

Jeremy's sentencing is to occur on November 15, 2013 in the Southern District of New York. If you would like to write a letter of support to the judge on his behalf, please visit www.freejeremy.net to download instructions on how to do so.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a law intended to address federal computer-related offenses. It is an antiquated piece of legislation written before the creation of the Internet which provides extreme penalties for online crimes in stark contrast to offline crimes.

The CFAA was written in 1984, before there was a world wide web, but it now functions as the go-to criminal law for the internet, offering tremendous leeway to prosecutors because it is so vague that virtually everyone has violated it. The most recent high-profile CFAA case involved the activist Aaron Swartz, who was threatened with a 35-year sentence for downloading (though not distributing) freely available academic journals. Swartz ended up taking his own life. In another case, Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev) was recently convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for pointing out to a journalist a security flaw on an AT&T's server containing iPad user data.

The CFAA is a very blunt legal instrument. Rather than punish based on intent and actual harm, the CFAA allows prosecutors to charge individuals with crimes punishable by decades in prison for online activity that many would consider to be stunts. It is almost unique in criminal law because of the amount of power it gives to corporations to both define what constitutes the crime?through terms of service agreements?and, by coming up with an amount of claimed damages, what the sentence should be. Under the CFAA, damages can include proposed remedial security measures. The effect in this case is that Stratfor is claiming massive damages despite the fact that they stored customer information on unprotected, unencrypted databases that were easily accessed.

A movement to reform the CFAA is under way. It have only gained momentum with the death of activist Aaron Swartz in early 2013. To learn more and get involved, check out the Aaron's Law campaign.

At the same time, lawmakers have introduced reforms that would make the CFAA even more restrictive with even more severe penalties. Activists and everyday internet users are pushing back against the proposed reforms. Click here to join in saying "No!" to a harsher CFAA.